FRED RUSSELL, JR
Fred Russell, Jr., was born on November 15, 1927, in St. Johns, Apache County, Arizona. He was the second child of Fred and Ida Nelson Russell, with an older sister, Elaine, born in 1926, and three younger sisters, Caroldene, Jeanne and Beverly Ann.
Freddy, as he was called, was a tow-head (blonde) and had very long eyelashes and beautiful, big brown eyes. There was a picture taken of him, with his sister Elaine to the left and a cousin to the right. There is another picture taken of Freddy, with Elaine, sitting on the back of a pony in front of their brick home on Montecido Street, in Phoenix, before that home burned to the ground.
Freddy was a happy child and was well liked by everyone who knew him. When his father was working as a counselor at the CCC Camp in Clifton, Freddy would sometimes go to work with his dad. CCC Camps were organized during the Great Depression of the 1930s, so that young men, who lived at the camp, could go to school and then learn to work. They worked on various public projects, including building footpaths, bridges, and buildings, including the high school gymnasium in Thatcher. Freddy became well known to the young men at the camp, who enjoyed having him around, like a favorite “little brother.”
Freddy, according to his sisters, was very kind and thoughtful and sometimes asked his mother if he could do things for her. On that fateful Tuesday morning, March 24, 1936 (he was eight years and four months old), before leaving for school, Freddy asked his mother if he could do something to help her. She told him to just go to school. When he insisted, she told him that he that could clean out the potato bin under the sink, which he cheerfully did. Before he left for school he hugged her and told her how much he loved her.
Freddy never came home from school. After school he went with a friend to the Frisco (San Francisco) River, which ran near their home. They were either trying to retrieve a fishing pole, or get pussy willows (there are different stories), when Freddy accidentally fell into the river and was swept away, to his death.
His companion and friend, the son of the local doctor, had experienced another trauma in his young life; his own little brother was burned to death in a fire. Because of this, the friend was so afraid to tell his parents about the accident that he went home and hid from them. (We learn this from a newspaper article.) It was many hours later that a search party, including the young men from the CCC Camp, combed the river and finally found Freddy’s lifeless little body.
A special memorial service was held for Freddy at the CCC Camp. His father, the English teacher, wrote a touching poetic tribute about Freddy, which was printed in the camp newspaper. (A copy of the newspaper still exists.) Elaine remembers the flags that were draped over the makeshift coffin, that was placed in the back of the family’s old red pickup truck. With father Fred driving, Ida holding baby Beverly Ann, and Elaine, Caroldene and Jeanne crowded in-between, as they always rode, the family took the body to Mesa, some for or six hours away. There, Grandma Harriet Russell and other family members, offered comfort, and held a family funeral in the Meldrum Mortuary. Freddy was buried in the Mesa Cemetery.
His father later had Freddy’s body exhumed and moved to the Safford Cemetery, in a plot where his parents and sister, who was only two months old when he died, were also laid to rest.
Because Freddy hadn’t yet been baptized, he was baptized by proxy two years later in the Mesa Temple on April 30, and his temple work was completed on May 6, 1938.